Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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RNC concern for fairness: real or contrived?

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has issued a stern warning to NBC and CNN: Don’t air films about Hillary Rodham Clinton to avoid being shut out of Republican presidential debates during the 2016 election season.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/315513-rnc-warns-nbc-cnn-to-drop-clinton-projects-or-lose-2016-debates

I can’t pretend to know what’s in anyone’s heart, but Priebus says showing such a film would create an unfair advantage for the former first lady/senator/secretary of state were she to run against a Democratic Party primary field. Oh, he also mentions the advantage she’d have against the Republican nominee in the fall campaign, were she to be nominated by the Democrats.

“This suggests a deliberate attempt at influencing American political opinion in favor of a preferred candidate,” Priebus wrote. “I find this disturbing and disappointing.”

You know what? I think he might have a point. I wonder, though, about the wisdom of cutting the networks out of the debate process by showing the film. CNN is planning a feature-length film about HRC’s public service career; NBC is planning to air a four-part miniseries.

A couple of questions need fleshing out, however. Will these films look at the bad along with the good? No one in the know is saying how HRC will be portrayed. The best option would be characterize her in a neutral light — which wouldn’t be nearly good enough for those on the right who despise her so deeply. It might not be good enough, either, for those on the left who support her so ardently.

Make no mistake that Hillary Clinton is a compelling public figure. Still, it’s not yet been determined whether she’s actually going to run for president in 2016. Everyone with an opinion on the matter seems to think she is a shoo-in to seek the White House one final time.

Stranger things than a surprise announcement to the contrary, though, can and have happened.

Stay tuned.

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Al-Qaida threat prompts needed response

The standing down of U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East provides an example of a lesson learned from a tragic event.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/05/politics/us-embassies-close/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I refer to Benghazi, which has become a sort of shorthand for the terrible Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in that Libyan city, which left four U.S. officials dead, including the nation’s ambassador to Libya. Benghazi also has become a prime target for right-wing conspiracy theorists who keep contending that the “scandal” is the result of gross negligence on the part of the Obama administration and the State Department.

I contend, however, that it was a tragedy brought on by the confusion of a fire fight that certainly was the result of some mistakes. Are senior administration officials to blame for purposely deceiving the public? I doubt that is the case.

But the standing down of embassy compounds shows that national security officials can learn from those mistakes and seek to prevent future tragedies.

Al-Qaida reportedly had been planning some kind of major attack on U.S. installations, which prompted the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Agency to order the closures of the embassies and the heightened alert of our military forces stationed near the trouble spots.

I, too, wish Benghazi never had happened and I wish we could bring those brave Americans back to life. What’s done is done and the nation mourns that tragedy. I am grateful, though, that our national security team can learn from — and act on — the mistakes it has made.

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FEMA shifts gears on West relief

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, once the bogeyman in Texas, has changed its mind and will expedite federal aid to help West, Texas rebuild after the devastating fertilizer plant explosion this past fall.

It interests me that Gov. Rick Perry, who tore FEMA a new one when it first denied the federal disaster declaration, hasn’t yet actually thanked the feds publicly for it.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/02/us/texas-fema-plant-blast/index.html

Perry instead praised the state effort in appealing that decision, as reported by CNN. I get that the governor is proud of the state’s effort to persuade the feds to change their mind. It is to the state’s credit that it was able to move the federal bureaucracy.

How much harm would it do, though, for the Republican governor to say a good word about the Democratic administration that enabled FEMA to do the right thing?

I guess it would do a lot of harm, given that Perry well could be positioning himself for another run at the presidency. He can’t look too, um, friendly toward those dreaded Democrats.

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Perry in deep hole for 2016

Rick Perry needs to get his act together in a big hurry if he’s entertaining the idea of running for president once more in 2016.

The Republican Texas governor is lagging far behind former first lady/Sen./Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in a possible matchup for the next presidential election.

Hillary Clinton trounces Rick Perry in presidential match-up; Perry, Ted Cruz lag behind in GOP primary

Clinton trounces Perry by significant double-digit margins, according to a McClatchy-Marist poll. The closest Republicans are New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who trail Clinton by 6 and 8 points, respectively, in the poll.

Perry’s poll standing? He falls 16 points behind Clinton.

I am well aware that this is early in the cycle for the next presidential campaign. Clinton hasn’t even declared her intentions, although the smart money says she’s going to run once she catches her breath from all the globetrotting she did as secretary of state. HRC set some kind of travel record for number of countries visited and miles flown during her four years as the nation’s top diplomat.

Were she to run, my hunch is that she’ll be virtually unstoppable. That is the calculation anyone who challenges her will have to make — especially if they cannot improve on double-digit polling deficits.

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Global war on terror far from over

The standing down today of 21 U.S. embassies around the world because of so-called terrorist “chatter” has opened up a bit of a debate over whether President Obama said the “global war on terror is over.”

It also illustrates how headlines can be, well, a bit misleading.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/23/obama-global-war-on-terror-is-over

The headline on this link illustrates the point.

It tells of speech Obama made in May in which he declared a significant change in U.S. strategy in fighting international terrorists. He vowed to end drone strikes, restated his intention to close the U.S. terrorist prison in Guantanamo, Cuba and declared that the global war as we’ve known it since 9/11 has come to an end.

But as I read the story contained in the attached link, I read that the president declared his intention to keep looking for bad guys, to keep searching for their hiding places and to kill or capture them whenever possible.

Yet, the president’s many critics in the conservative mainstream media keep harping on half-truths and keep trying to put words in his mouth in the wake of the embassy stand-down.

I’m pretty sure we’re going to remain at war with international terrorist organizations throughout the remainder of Barack Obama’s time in office and we’re going to keep fighting that war well into the next administration’s tenure in the White House. Heck, we might still be fighting them for the rest of all of our lives.

Our strategies do change, though, as circumstances warrant. That’s what I’m hearing the president say about the global war on terror.

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Jobs are up; jobless rate down … still no love

The U.S. Labor Department today reported 162,000 jobs were added to the nation’s payrolls in July, while the jobless rate fell to 7.4 percent, the lowest in nearly five years.

But still, despite that, the news is being received with a shrug and a “so what?” even from those who detest President Obama and his economic policies.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/08/02/jobs-report-july/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fortunefinance+%28Fortune+Finance%3A+Hedge+Funds%2C+Markets%2C+Mergers+%26+Acquisitions%2C+Private+Equity%2C+Venture+Capital%2C+Wall+Street%2C+Washington%29&utm_content=Google+UK

It honestly puzzles me. Then again, I don’t get paid to analyze this data. I’m watching all this unfold from the peanut gallery, like most Americans – and that includes the TV talk show chatterboxes who purport to be the know-it-alls of everything that’s supposed to matter.

This administration took office with the nation in free fall. We were losing – depending on who’s counting – 700,000 to 800,000 jobs each month. Banks were crashing. Housing markets all across the country were cratering. A member of my family – a well-educated architect – personified the agony of what happened when he lost his job as the housing market disintegrated all along the West Coast.

What’s happened since then? The government added rules that added accountability to lenders who were loaning money to people who couldn’t repay their loans. Rules for banks were tightened. The government pumped money into state and local economies – such as Texas and Amarillo, where officials were more than happy to take it. Jobs have been added at a slow, but reasonably steady rate.

Is the economy growing fast enough? No. Considering where we were at the start of 2009 and where we’ve gone since then, though, I’d rate the policies a success.

Yes, some individuals disagree with that. Let ‘em disagree. I’ll stand by what I’ve witnessed from the cheap seats.

Oh, and my family member who lost job in 2009? He’s back to work … as an architect.

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Snowden to get released from airport custody

Edward Snowden, the man on the lam from U.S. officials for leaking national security information to the world, is making a break for “freedom” from Russian airport arrest.

The Russians have given Snowden temporary asylum, which has angered U.S. officials deeply. Snowden had been holed up in a Moscow airport transit lounge since fleeing there from Hong Kong several weeks ago.

I can hear President Obama’s critics now: BHO is a feckless president; he’s getting pushed around by Russian President/strongman Vladimir Putin; we need to do something, anything, to punish the Russians.

What, precisely, is the United States supposed to do to Putin and the Russian? Bomb them? Invade? Slap an embargo on them?

Barack Obama is not without some options. The first one is to get on the phone, call his pal Vlad and tell him how angry he is. I’ll bet real money that Putin, the former KGB spook, won’t budge. He doesn’t frighten easily.

I also believe the president should cancel his upcoming summit with Putin in Russia. The two men will nothing else to discuss than what to do about Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked the secrets.

Perhaps the president should remind Putin what he said just a few weeks ago, that Putin didn’t want to do anything to upset his American “partners.” Well, he’s just done it.

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Now comes the time for negotiation

President Barack Obama has just given his congressional Republican foes something with which to negotiate in the drive to boost the nation’s economy.

Will they take the deal or will they insist – as they seemingly always do – that the president isn’t dealing in good faith, or some such nonsense.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/314497-obama-offers-deal-to-cut-corporate-tax-rate-to-28-percent

Obama has proposed a dramatic reduction in corporate tax rates in exchange for spending on infrastructure improvement, the kind of thing that at least one notable Republican president – Dwight Eisenhower – used to favor.

Now, where I come from, Obama has just given the Republicans who control the House of Representatives and who comprise a sizable minority in the Senate, something upon which to negotiate.

The spending program would produce more jobs for those willing to work on infrastructure improvements – roads and bridges, that sort of thing. Politicians of both parties say they want to put more people back to work. Republicans, meanwhile, insist that corporations pay too much in taxes. Thus, the president has gone the extra mile – maybe two or three – in meeting their demands.

Initial reaction to the plan, as reported by The Hill, is lukewarm at best. “The plan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted, was ‘an unmistakable signal that the president has backed away from his campaign-era promise to corporate America that tax reform would be revenue-neutral to them,’” the Hill reported.

Maybe McConnell is merely using that response as a negotiating ploy. Then again, maybe it’s just the Republicans digging in their heels yet again on another proposal from their Democratic adversary in the White House.

If it’s the latter, we’re heading for a rocky autumn season, courtesy of continuing GOP intransigence.

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Obama: We won the Korean War

President Barack Obama made an interesting – some might say startling – assertion the other day in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the truce that stopped the fighting during the Korean War.

He said the good guys actually won the war.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/313883-obama-we-will-not-forget-korean-wars-legacy

The Korean War long has been thought of as the nation’s “forgotten war,” coming so soon after the end of the World War II and as another war, in Vietnam, was just beginning to get stoked. Roughly 40,000 Americans died during the Korean War in some of the most intense and bloody combat this nation has ever seen.

It’s also been a matter of conventional wisdom that the fighting ended in a stalemate. South and North Korea never have signed a peace treaty. An armistice – plus the presence of U.S. military personnel and the threat of nuclear annihilation – have kept the two sides from shooting at each other.

President Obama put a different spin on the outcome while paying tribute to the U.S. veterans who fought in Korea.

“That war was no tie. Korea was a victory,” he said at a Washington ceremony in remarks to Korean War veterans. “When 50 million South Koreans live in freedom, a vibrant democracy … a stark contrast to the repression and poverty of the North, that is a victory and that is your legacy.”

When you look at it that way, the Korean War surely was a victory for our side.

The president also said this:

“Unlike World War II, Korea did not galvanize our country, these veterans did not return to parades. Unlike Vietnam, Korea did not tear at our country, these veterans did not return to protests.

“Among many Americans tired of war, there was, it seems, a desire to forget, to move on. Here in America, no war should ever be forgotten, no veteran should ever be overlooked.”

This veteran thanks you, Mr. President.

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What? Cruz, Cornyn and Obama on same side?

I believe hell has just frozen over.

U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, two stalwart Texas Republicans, have locked arms with the Democratic president of the United States, Barack Obama, in support of a student loan bill that rolls back a plan to double interest rates for students who have to pay back their college loans.

I’m pinching myself. I’m still here, yes?

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-on-the-potomac/2013/07/cornyn-cruz-side-with-obama-on-bipartisan-student-loan-deal/

The bill sailed through the Senate with an 81-18 vote. Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee was the lone GOP vote against it; Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri did not vote.

And get a load of this: The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to approve the legislation in about a month, enabling the president to sign quickly into law.

The bill essentially ties student loan interest rates to the market, which effectively kills the plan that would have doubled the interest rates students would be charged. The effect of that would have a serious impact on non-scholarship students’ ability to pay for college.

We all want our young people to get as much education as possible, yes?

As the San Antonio Express-News reported, the bill would have an impact on approximately 650,000 Texas college students.

I’m glad — no, delighted — to see this demonstration of bipartisanship, especially when it involves two fire-breathing Republican senators from Texas.

I do not, though, expect it continue. Politics is politics, you know, and that means the two sides are going to look for reasons to sink their teeth into each other’s throat.